Battle of the Giant Hard Drives: Barracuda Vs. Caviar

by Anton Shilov

[ 01/30/2006 | 10:48 PM ]

The demand for high-capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) is growing tremendously as users become more and more familiar with digital photography, video and games. Therefore, a lot of buyers are asking themselves which of the hard drives currently available can both operate quickly and store a lot of data. It seems that a web-site has posted an answer to the question.<%BANNER[article_nw]%>

ExtremeTech has reviewed Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.9 500GB hard drive and Western Digital’s Caviar RE2 400GB product in an attempt to find out which one is better performance- and price- wise.

“Our benchmark results suggest the Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB is a bit more competent for typical Windows tasks, but we feel that both of these drives offer comparable and impressive performance for the applications they’re designed for. They’re both very quiet and robust, and they come with five-year warranties,” the review says.

The web-site points out that Seagate’s 500GB HDD costs $344, whereas WD’s 400GB product is quoted at $209 online.

• ExtremeTech: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB and Western Digital Caviar RE2 400GB.